A Rose, Sweet and Beautiful
by Littlefoot the Warrior
Summary: A one-shot about romance, love and staying loyal in Venice. Gets more mature at the end, rating between T and M . Major Nine/Rose.


Rose awoke, the sunlight shining through the windows. Or, rather instead of sunlight, artificially generated sunlight inside the Tardis in a room called the Garden which Rose's room looked out onto. And the Garden wasn't really a garden; it was more of an extremely large outdoor park. About 3 acres of space, all designed to look like Earth's natural landscape.

She blinked, slightly stunned by the brightness. She felt good, as if something extraordinary had happened, but nothing did.

And she remembered her dream.

It was a sweet dream, similar to many of the dreams that she had been having the past week. She was, well, married to the Doctor, and they were happy together, and they…well, she dreamed that they were having sex. Rose _loved_ the Doctor. She wanted to be able to hug him, and kiss him, but she knew that that could never happen. He was a Time Lord, and she was a stupid ape, as the Doctor liked to call humans.

Rose shrugged off the sweetness of her dream, and got up to get dressed. She had access to a wardrobe of unlimited things, but she always settled for her own clothes that she brought with her to the Tardis. She settled for a particularly tight, low-cut t-shirt, and some black jeans. Knowing that any adventure they went on today would involve running, Rose slipped on her sneakers. She did her hair up in a sexy messy bun, hoping to gain some attention from the Doctor.

She slipped out of her room, and walked quietly to the kitchen. She wanted to avoid the Doctor until she had eaten breakfast, because she knew he'd offer to cook for her, and he couldn't cook anything to save his life, something that may actually bring the Doctor down. "_Note to self: don't tell the Doctor's enemies that._"

Thankfully for Rose, the Doctor wasn't in the kitchen. She ate her toast and jam in silence, scrolling through the Internet, on a very futuristic laptop the Doctor had. He said it was from the year 2012, which surprised her. The technology was incredible. It was called a "Macbook Pro", and was obviously way fancier than the Macbook Pro's of 2005 and 2006. The Internet was set for her current time stream, so she couldn't see future events. As the Doctor always says, foresight is never a good thing.

As soon as she finished, the Doctor walked in, scrubbing something off his leather jacket.

"Whatch'ya got on there?" Rose said, swallowing her tea.

"Oh, just took a short trip while you slept. Got in a pickle with some Melofeli on the planet Flenn-D4. One of them ended up exploding." He said, not looking up. She admired the way his face could crinkle so much when he was angry, yet stay so handsome. He had a little bit of the Melofeli on the front of his maroon jumper.

"What, do you not sleep?" Rose laughed.

"No, I sleep. About an hour, at most."

"Oh my god, how are you not exhausted?"

"Time Lords. It's an evolutionary trait of ours to not need sleep, thus not wasting time. I hardly use my bedroom, just for thinking when I'm angry." He said, his northern accent thick.

"Do you do this a lot when I sleep?"

"Yup" He popped the "p". Rose got up, took his jacket from him, and started scrubbing the goop off the way her mum taught her to. He wasn't doing a very good job of cleaning his jacket, and Rose got it clean in no time. She looked at his jumper, raising her eyebrows. "Oh!" He said, noticing the goop from the Melofeli was also on that. He took it off, leaving no shirt or anything on underneath. Rose tried not to blush at the fact that he was shirtless.

"So, how exactly did this Melofeli explode?" Rose said, attempting to keep her mind off of his body. He wasn't exactly ripped, but he clearly had some muscles. He also wasn't super thin like Mickey, but she liked that. Then she remembered, Mickey, her boyfriend. She forgot about him…and felt guilty. She was so attracted to the Doctor, and she blew Mickey off last time she saw him. True, she did ask the Doctor to take him along, but secretly, she didn't want him to come. Feeling guilty again, Rose's mind went back to cleaning the shirt. She didn't notice the Doctor telling her about his little adventure, since she was too distracted. She just nodded and occasionally hummed "yes", and tried to keep her eyes off his body. He looked older than her; he was older than her, by about 881 years. "Interesting!" She said, when he finished, and his jumper was clean. "Well, you better get a new one, this one's all wet now." She said, handing it back to him.

"Thanks." He smiled, looking her in the eyes. She smiled back, and was almost out of the room when he called her. "And Rose," He started, grabbing his leather jacket, She turned around. "There's something I've got to tell you!"

Rose held her breath–"_Is he going to tell me he loves me?"_ she thought to her self, hoping. "Yeah?"

"There's a fascinating meteor shower we can see from Venice, in the 1950's, and It's supposed to be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. Wanna go?"

"Yes!" she cried, sounding a little too exited. He beamed, and ran ahead to the Tardis console room. "I thought you needed a shirt?" she said, running behind him.

"Oh yeah! Could you get me one, my room is just down that hallway." He pointed in the direction of his room. Rose nodded, and ran that way. She'd never seen his room before; it was almost like it was off-limits. And now she was getting to see it!

She went down the hallway, and the only door in the entire hallway was at the very end. It was definitely the Doctor's, and as she turned the knob, a gust of sweet smelling air greeted her nose. The room was purple, purple everywhere, and there were books scattered everywhere, books he was reading and books he was writing. "_He does a lot more in here than think_" she thought to herself. She found a book of poems he was writing–it had such a beautiful drawing of a rose on the cover page. She read the first poem:

_A Rose, so sweet and beautiful,_

_Came down from the heavens,_

_And warmed my cool hearts._

_A Rose, so strong and brave, _

_Helped me in my weakest days._

_A Rose, so kind and thoughtful, _

_Brought peace to my raging anger, _

_And to whom I love most dearly._

Rose studied the poem a bit. Her first thought was "_this is rubbish_", but then she studied it harder. He capitalized "Rose", and not anything else besides the beginnings of the lines….

"Oh!" She gasped, realizing the truth. She quickly set the book down where it was originally, saw a dark blue jumper lying on the dresser, grabbed it, and ran out of the room, not wasting any time.

When she got to the console room, the Doctor was setting the time and date of the location they were going.

"Took you long enough!" he teased her. She tossed him the jumper, and watched him put it on.

"Your room is so messy, it took me awhile to find it!" she teased him right back. For a moment, no longer than a second, he had a look of worry on his face. Was he concerned that she might have seen the book of poems? No, it was closed, he can't be worrying about that. Did one of the open books have something written about her then?

"Alright, then, Venice, 1950!" he smiled, and pulled a lever, sending the Tardis into the Time Vortex, to their destination.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Rose and the Doctor walked through the streets of Venice, waiting for the night to fall.

"Ooh! Ooh! Lets go on one of those!" She pointed happily to a gondola, a common tourist attraction in her time.

"Haven't got any money." The Doctor shrugged.

"Good thing the sign says 'free'!" Rose laughed, pointing to a small cardboard sign by a gondola driver, waiting for a customer. She took the Doctor's hand and dragged him along. "Can we get a ride?" She asked the driver.

"Yes, fair lady." The driver said, very gentleman-like. Rose and the Doctor hopped into the gondola, and the driver asked where they wanted to go.

"Oh, anywhere." Rose said.

"Actually, there is a place." The Doctor said. He pulled out a map of Venice from his leather jacket, and showed the driver the path he wanted to take. Rose didn't see, but she looked at the girls with pretty skirts and sunglasses on. She wished she were dressed for the occasion, but they couldn't really go back to the Tardis now. The Doctor saw her looking at the girls, and the storefront that was where the girls were. "Could you wait here for just a couple minutes?" He asked the driver. He nodded, and took Rose's hand and pulled her over to the store. He sidestepped over to an ATM-clearly new technology for 1959 Italy, quickly soniced it, and pulled out the 100€ it gave him.

"That's stealing, isn't it?" Rose flirted.

"Hey, I've saved this planet's butt more times than there are people on it, I deserve 100€ here and there!"

"I'm only kidding," She said, smiling, "what's the money for?"

"So you can get a pretty dress." He said, and pulled her into the shop.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

A couple minutes later, the Doctor and Rose walked out of the shop, and hopped into the gondola. The Doctor bought Rose a white knee-length dress, one that widened at the bottom, like a poodle skirt, just without the poodle. She had black ray band sunglasses, and felt very much like Audrey Hepburn.

The gondola took them along some very pretty canals, and Rose saw much of Venice that she had never seen in pictures. She pointed out a cat that was sitting on the ledge of a window, so close to the water. The Doctor pointed out a statue of a man, saying that he met the man once, whom was very grumpy.

Soon, around sunset, they saw a bridge, white and beautifully sculpted. Rose recognized it by sight, and told the Doctor the story of it.

"They say that if a couple kisses while drifting on a gondola under the bridge at sunset, they will enjoy eternal love." She remembered from her history classes at school. She looked over to the Doctor, and in a single, longing look, he held her chin, and pulled her close, gently kissing her lips.

They held their kiss until the sun set, and when they opened their eyes, they both knew that they love each other. Rose kissed him again, running her hands up over his shoulders. He gently held her soft face with his strong hands, toughened by war and fighting. She held onto him around his neck, and the two kissed for what seemed like minutes. The driver stopped at the dock of a huge plaza, and the Doctor and Rose pulled apart, and they took hands as they strode across the plaza to a tall tower. It took awhile to get to the top, but as soon as they got there, the meteor shower started, and they stood, hand in hand, watching the beautiful display of meteors burning up in the atmosphere.

Ten minutes later, when it ended, the couple raced down the stairs, and ran along alleys and across bridges until they got back to the Tardis. The Doctor picked up Rose and carried her to his room, the two kissing and touching all the way there. He put her down on the bed, and she took his jacket off of him. He held her in a warm embrace, and he sat down on the bed, still kissing Rose. She lay on her back, and he crawled over the bed to her, unbuttoning the five top buttons of her new dress. She sat up, kissing him. He took his own jumper off, leaving him shirtless. They embraced passionately, until Rose stopped and pulled away, with a faraway look in her eyes.

"What's wrong?" he caressed her cheek.

"Mickey." She whispered, eyes beginning to water with guilt. She hurried off the bed, buttoning her dress. She stopped at the door, looking back at the hurt Doctor. "I love you." She whispered, tears now flowing down her cheeks, and ran to her room.


End file.
